I've been playing with a private lot for a few RL weeks (and it took a ridiculous amount of Google-fu to even figure out that they are called 'Private Lots'), and I'm not sure if what my game is doing is what it's supposed to be doing with them.

Whenever my sims build anything on the Private Lot through legitimate means rather than MC/Awesomemod, it doesn't actually take money from the family funds, however the property value does increase. This seems very strange and rather cheaty - shouldn't it cost money?

Can someone tell how Private Lots (not Resort Lots) work? Point me in the direction of a comprehensive guide? Anything? Please?

I don't like my sims getting anything on the cheap, let alone for free. My sims pay for their shopping, their clothes and only by living in a one room hut with no separate bathroom facilities would their rent/property tax be less than 650 simoleans - per bill.

Slight correction, if I may. They did think it through and this is the result.

It's been a little while since I used these, but when I did it was mostly so I could put live-iin-maids/gardeners/nannies etc on a small 10x10 lot in their own house or have more room for horse owners and their stables/paddocks. Don't remember any problems with money when building on them though. I also prefer to have lots of money sinks in the game, so pretty sure I would've noticed.



You can't? In regular game-play or just when time traveling?

It's good if your selfsim has a big mansion, and the courtyard / front or back garden is a separate lot. Just make it a private lot, and you'll have it all to yourself.

For those who are not too familiar with private lots:

There are several types: pre-made ones are the vacation homes in World Adventures, the ones on the hidden islands in Island Paradise, the potential homes in Oasis Landing from Into The Future, and ones you can make yourself either by buying an empty residential lot through the Real Estate function on phones and computers or in Edit Town by tagging them as "Ownable" as opposed to "Regular".
One reason for having this lot type is, I guess, to tag them as exempt from story progression, i.e. story progression cannot move random families into owned or ownable lots, and in ITF these lots will not be used when the game shuffles the existing families around to make space for the descendants of your played household.
Once you own an additional private/ownable lot a new menu option appears on this lot in Map View or by clicking on the walls, "Real Estate...", and this contains a sub-menu with things like "Move Household Here" or "Make This Lot a Resort" or "Build/Buy On this Lot" (exact wording may be different). The latter is similar to the one usually only available on owned community lots, venues or resorts, or through testingcheatsenabled and shift-clicking on the ground.

Now with regard to OP's issue: in the default game after enabling testingcheats and shift-clicking on any lot and choosing "Build/Buy On This Lot" any changes you make then in Build/Buy mode will be subtracted from your family funds.
AwesomeMod, for example, has changed this such that if you do this on a community lot or unoccupied residential lot then you won't be charged, which is quite handy for people like me who like to change lots on-the-fly.

I, too, have noticed, however, that whenever I make changes on owned lots I don't get charged either. I thought that this was because of AwesomeMod, but apparently this happens in a vanilla game, too.

What Don Babilon says here:



Yes, this is precisely what I meant and I (clearly) hadn't made the connection that my game mods are treating Private Lots as Community Lots. Okay, a little irritating, but a least I know one way or the other how it's supposed to work. I'm not gonna get rid of AwesomeMod so I'll have to just work around it (delete the funds via MC is easily done).

Thank you all for your help and interest.

I just checked in an AM-free game and it really seems that without AM you will be properly charged when you make changes on owned lots.

I usually exploit this oversight by buying cars, boats or other personal inventory items on those lots for free, customise them and then transfer them to the other residents (thanks to AM, which allows you to simply drag them into their inventories). That way they have the cars that I want them to have, umbrellas that they missed and other goodies without depleting my coffers and/or making them the active household.

It's still odd though, because when you own a community lot, you will be charged for any changes.

Right, so it seems something in AM's coding isn't playing well with something in IP's coding Fair enough, I can live with that, now I know it's a (minor) issue.


I have to say though, I think you're very brave to run an AM-free game It didn't even occur to me to try, even after you mentioned AM might be be a factor. I haven't run TS3 without AM since it was released - in fact I haven't run an unmodded game since I discovered AM in TS2, around NL! To me, the game just doesn't run/play well without them.

I know it has been a while. But I recently encountered this issue too, and thanks to the info here, I can help identifying the root causes of the free build-buy issue in private lot. It is indeed caused by a bug inside AwesomeMod which miss checking ownership of private property when granting free build-buy.

I have filed the bug in MATY, but I am not sure if Pescado is going to update it anytime soon. So just in case anyone encountering this annoyance problem, (and you happen to know how to tinker with script mod), you can go to this post to identify and apply the fix on your own.

Hopefully Pescado is going to update the mod, although it has been maybe almost a decade when maybe the bug exists

EDIT: I think it is a bad idea to inject the fix directly to the AM. I think the code is booby-trapped by Pes to prevent someone else to modify his mod (I think particularly to prevent someone removing the teen-romance restriction with the mod). When I made that modification, the game starts to be really unstable and even crash my PC. I don't think it is worth it to invest our time to reverse engineer the changed assembly to look for the booby trap, rather it is better to either wait for him to fix it, or use my workaround mod which add additional code which fix the bug.

I have PMed him at MATY, but we can just wait until he noticed or he is back to the forum.

DISCLAIMER: I made this fix in a very short time, and I make no warranty whatsoever. I tested it and it works as intended. It should not have any conflict with other mod as it is a pure scripting mod. Use at your own risk, and it is good idea to backup and save frequently.

EDIT: Fixed by Pes at MATY. Update your AwesomeMod instead.